The Politics of Space within the Mexico-US Border Region: The War on Drugs and Geographies of Violence in Sicario (2015)

abstract:This article examines the politics of space in Denis Villeneuve's Sicario (2015), drawing upon the work of cultural geographers and cultural scholars who have paid special attention to geographies of violence. The analysis of the film's depiction of the Mexico-US border region as a drug war zone is based on the idea that the politics of space has to be found in the dynamic multiplicities of time-space and local-global interfaces. The film establishes time-space interconnections that expose the competing imaginary geographies serving to justify US enduring colonial power relations on the American continent and elsewhere. Since space in the film is mainly experienced by and through a woman agent, these time-space interconnections are problematized by gender relations to construct more abstract ideas on the US government's transformation in a conflict that conflates the war on drugs, terror, and immigration.